I’ve been battling a head cold of sinuses and various other fun for several days now. I can point to when it began, precisely at the end of dinner on Christmas Eve. This being the holidays, and that meaning traveling and a dozen people’s varying schedules and being courteous to the dietary habits of others, that would have been at around 5 p.m.
We’d had dinner with a portion of the family that was just getting over some bug or another. And I thought, for a time, that I’d been given some fast acting strain of a thing that I did not want.
Instead, before I complain about being sick and never eating, let me tell you about the best Christmas present I received on Christmas Eve.
We show up late, because there is being courteous to the dietary habits of others and then there is being alternatively busy and passive aggressive against the idea of eating dinner at 3:30 in the afternoon. So we sit down, all of the family in one big giant circle. For some this is a nice time. For others, perhaps they’d rather be elsewhere. Presents are passed around because one of the kids has to go to his father’s for another meal — the typical modern American Christmas, of course.
So it turns out that all of the gifts are aimed at the children, as it should be. This set ranges from 10 to 17 or so. Being book lovers, and considering these particular kids, The Yankee and I decided we’d simply do gift cards for all of them to a local bookstore.
The 10-year-old, after the haze of Christmas presents presents burns down to a nice, soft, amber glow in his mind, becomes upset. He has gotten me nothing. He disappears. He scours his room. He sends word that I am to join him there. He presents a miniature American flag. And a child’s giving, loving heart.
For the next three hours he proceeded to try to cheat me out of every dollar possible at Monopoly, but, still, for a moment, that was perfect.
Anyway, that was Christmas Eve, where I started coming down with something in his house. When the plane landed the day before yesterday here I couldn’t hear anything because of whatever is going on in my head. I’ve been walking around sniffling and listening to everything as if I’m three feet under water.
So we went for a run this morning. So we walked up the hill to the park where my wife played as a child, the same park where we had our engagement photos taken a few years ago. It is one of those old, large homes turned into a city showcase arrangements. There are dog runs and empty fields and disc golf and a gravel path and plenty of woods.
It was about 39 degrees and I’m going to be that guy, here, but the run helped me feel better. Cleared my head a bit. Now I’m hearing things slightly more clearly, and so on. I got in just over four miles.
We got back to the in-laws just in time to see Uncle Scott, who was up from New Jersey for Connecticut Christmas. How nice of him to wait for us, huh?
Cleaned up, and then Christmas presents, where Santa did an amazing job of bringing wonderful things to everyone. I’m still very much under the spell of that thing parents tell kids just before Christmas, and I’m always sure that I’ve never been good enough to deserve the Christmas gifts I receive. This year, this fine year, was no exception.
We had Christmas dinner, at a reasonable hour. And I calculated this: I believe it has been eight days since I’ve had both lunch and dinner at or near their regular times.
Now let me tell you about the luck of Christmas dinner. My mother-in-law, she’s a fine chef. Christmas in their home is shrimp cocktails and prime rib. Prime rib isn’t the first cut of meat I’d choose for myself, but she makes it happen and it was delicious, as always.
So I helped her clean up afterward and then went to play with my Christmas presents, which are too many and too grand for a boy like me.
Also, at this Christmas dinner, we open crackers. It seems you have this tradition or you’ve never heard of it. There is a cardboard tube with a ribbon coming out of either side. You pull the ribbons and it pops, a mini-firework! The tube opens and you get a paper crown for dinner, a cracker jack-type toy and a joke. These are the jokes we received tonight:
And Christmas still isn’t finished! One more tomorrow …
